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Cabbies told to be cautious, use their instincts after 1 driver killed, another stabbed in Jacksonville

A group of taxis and airport shuttles wait on Forsyth Street in front of the Greyhound Bus station in Jacksonville on Tuesday, June 10, the same day two men stabbed a 71-year-old cabbie for a $20 bill.

The dispatch radio in Joe Brady’s cab crackled with a message Tuesday morning as he sat in front of the Greyhound station in downtown Jacksonville.

The dispatcher’s precautionary warning came about six hours after two men stabbed a 71-year-old cabbie for a $20 bill. Saturday another cab driver, 43-year-old Stuart Carson, was found shot and killed in his taxi.

“This is a dangerous job,” said Brady, a 61-year-old who took a job driving a cab in Jacksonville when he was 20 and never quit.

He said he’s never been robbed but in the late 1970s Brady refused to give a ride to two men from downtown to Heckscher Drive. The men didn’t have a specific address and Brady said he was suspicious and asked for the $22 fee up front.

Marcus Blount, the CEO of Executive Cab where Brady works, said drivers have the final say on a fare.

“Your gut is always right,” he said. If a driver doesn’t like the looks of a fare, they can keep on driving, Blount said.

While it is common for cabs to pick up people who wave them down in the street, as happened early Tuesday, that can make finding possible suspects difficult.

“That becomes even more dangerous because you don’t have a cellphone to track,” Blount said.

it isn’t necessarily common for cabs in Jacksonville to have bulletproof barriers between driver and passenger, though they often have locating systems and some are equipped with panic buttons drivers can use.

Drivers have to be cautious if a fare doesn’t have a specific destination, another driver at the bus station said. Two people together who give conflicting instructions about a destination is another red flag.

Sylvia Ragland, a cab driver for four years, said there are certain neighborhoods where she will not go.

If she is flagged down by a fare rather than called by her dispatcher, Ragland tells the dispatcher where the pickup is made, where the destination is and contacts them again when the fare is dropped off.

“We’re trying to keep them safe,” Bob Glasser, the manager of Coastal Cab where Ragland works, said Tuesday.

That morning the company also issued a precaution.

“We reminded them. ‘You don’t have to pick up a customer if you don’t want to,’ ” he said